


Under His Eye

by somniferumKore (soglideaway)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Emetophobia, Eye Trauma, Other, drinking/alcoholism, horroterrors, sexually dubious contact
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-13
Updated: 2012-10-28
Packaged: 2017-11-16 06:10:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/536357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soglideaway/pseuds/somniferumKore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>TT: After you go, what do you think will happen to me?<br/>TT: Will I just cease to exist?<br/>TG: i dont know<br/>TG: i mean your whole timeline will<br/>TG: maybe<br/>TT: Maybe?<br/>TT: Is there a chance it'll continue to exist, and I'll just be here alone forever?<br/>TT: I'm not sure which outcome is more unsettling.</p><p>As slim as the chances were, Rose found herself very much in existence.</p><p>And not as alone as she had previously imagined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I

_"For since she had not died through fate, or by a well-earned death, but wretchedly, before her time, inflamed with sudden madness, Proserpine had not yet taken a lock of golden hair from her head, or condemned her soul to Stygian Orcus."_ \- **Judy Blume**  
  
  
Rose sat up and picked the crust from her eyes. She’d been asleep for some time, and returned to herself in cold sweats from a dreamless sleep. She now expected to find herself, blissfully unaware of the past four months, before her friends, still living and at the moment their game began. Instead she looked at the sky and found it in ribbons of opal above her. She bit her tongue until the waves of despair left her, then straightened her hairband from its skewed post.  
  
They had waited as long as they could. The word waited implied passivity, but that was wrong. They had waited in order to avoid stagnation, to avoid leaving the timeline to fold in on itself with Rose right in the centre of it. Together, Rose and Dave, children of Derse and doomed, doomed, doomed, they had held fast onto each other until the pile of Daves on LOHAC was more than Dave could bear. They had stayed well away from one another, following the spate of deaths. Rose had curled into herself, like an anemone, and Dave had been a perfect blank. They could feel a sheet of glass build between them and the longer they left it the less likely its demolishment. Rose had learned to deal with this pane of glass early on as her mother had taught her, with heady spirits and blatant disregard for her health. It suited Rose, and Dave managed his despair by strifing with whatever he could find. Up to, and including, the walls and doorframes of his home.  
  
Mom, Bro and Dad had gone missing, after only a few days. They could have been anywhere. Had either of the children searched the Medium earlier, they might have found them, but as the weeks went on the possibilities became fewer, and the desire to find the adults dwindled. With that came the demise of the desire to see each other. Death stuck in the air like a miasma, and between killing imps and ogres, the desire to infect one another further led to complete isolation. Pesterchum was a filter. Words on a screen carried nothing but meaning. Their meanings grew more cryptic, too, as extended metaphor and penile allegory guarded any emotion that might overflow and drown them. It was far simpler if they kept themselves in check, and killed, and talked strategy.  
  
And they did talk strategy. In time, a far-off future that hardly existed beyond a goal they might one day reach, Rose would fall asleep and Dave would leave her, and he would prototype himself to prevent the persistent giggles of Calsprite from ever existing. Rose would send him off with all the information he could need and so the game he returned to would be unlosable. That far-off future was never one Rose intended to exist, but one day it did come, and Rose was left alone.  
  
She refrained from pinching herself, and instead looked to her laptop. Dave was offline. Jade and John were offline, too, but she didn’t want to think of them much. She closed the pesterchum window and focussed on her walkthrough, or an imitation of it. There was a lot to catch up on. For one thing that doomed timelines don’t necessarily self-destruct. Even those timelines where there was only one entity left. She wished more than anything that she had been able to touch Dave before he had gone, to kiss his cheek, or hold his hand. She was glad she had never had the opportunity.  
  
??? tentacleTherapist  [?TT] RIGHT NOW opened memo on board lost on lonely alternate reality.  
  
TT: I don’t know if anyone can read this from where I am. I should think this is all accessible but I don’t even know if I lie within the meta-universe in which anything living still resides. I’d be writing my walkthrough but that server is unavailable right now, so I’m awaiting further correspondence from the Noble Circle. I’m alone on my land now aside from my consorts and the help they present to me at this conjecture is minimal at best. I’m going to take everything I can from LOLAR and continue my dialogue with the Horrorterrors. Since I’ve been left here their voices have gotten louder as though trying to get my attention. Curiously, they have predicted that soon I will hear them in sleep, and drawing on this I think that it’s a fair assumption that my dreamself is dead. The game mechanics seem to only allow one dreamself, perhaps due to it being a construct of the game, but infinite selves as I existed pre-game? Or perhaps my consciousness is no longer tangible, perhaps it never was. Baffling mysteries surround us.  
TT: In addition to this, certain aspects of the game no longer exist here. There are no consorts, and my sprite is nowhere to be found. He could simply be hiding but he never struck me as the type. I don’t look forward to whatever this solitude will bring.  
TT: I really hope somebody finds this memo and appreciates the title.  
  
[?TT]  closed memo.  
  
*****  
  
In the face of adversity it had always been Rose’s mantra to not panic and return to normal. Normal, in this case, was the routine consumption of excessive amounts of alcohol.  
  
When Rose drank, a variety of cocktails of questionable quality, she drank with intensity. She drank with the objective of reaching the bottom of the glass. When she mixed a mojito the fresh mint stayed her stomach long enough to down the alcohol, a kick to prepare her for the burn of the throat. When she drank a Bloody Mary she thought of half-remembered mnemonics of British history to get the vodka into her blood. Her hoards of grist were useless but for alchemising supplies, which she did with growing contempt for herself.  
  
When she drank she lay on her back, sometimes on her bed, sometimes out at sea, and felt sluggish and warm as though expiring in a bath so hot she felt light-headed. In this way she would almost hope for the sea to swallow her, for her body to stop floating and to sink to the bottom of the sea; or she would hope to become comatose, her liver withering away, black and blistered and scarred. She drank as she had with Dave, and stopped when her stomach felt heavy and cumbersome. Her head would loll by the neck and her eyes would grow heavy and she would sleep on the softest thing available to her.  
  
By the second week, however, she stumbled regularly out of her mother’s bar into the en suite, retching, and tears falling onto the porcelain of the bowl. She drank until she was certain that she would be pulled apart into lines of code: starting with her fingers, with a dread-ache cold in her toes, she would disappear. Her thoughts would lose coherence, her thoughts would integrate into a complex matrix and she would have only the slightest effect on Skaia. She would belong to Skaia and she would be Skaia and the Rose of Earth would exist no longer. But the game was sturdy around her, and chaos did not descend upon her.  
  
Pulling herself up from the floor, head-hazy, stomach-settled, and the sweat on her forehead cooling, she flushed the toilet and headed back to her room with a glass of water. She sat on the bed and swallowed it in three throaty gulps; it soothed her burning tongue and hoarse throat, lined her stomach mercifully. Her breathing was laboured, a comfort to her in its deep, slow inhalations, Lying on her bed lay her laptop. It was inert, unconnected for days. Hopeful, taken by the clinch of the liquor, she opened it up and tried to configure a connection. On the floor lay a green hub that was of little use within the session. On the screen the window showed a reconnection to an external source.  
  
\-- tentacleTherapist [TT]  began pestering grimAuxilliatrix  [GA]  \--  
  
TT: You haven’t pestered me in a while, “alien”.  
TT: I should say trolled, for cultural sensitivity’s sake.  
TT: But you used to enjoy it.  
TT: So I’m doing you a favour. Making up for all the times you clearly yearned for my purple prose.  
TT: Everyone else is offline, and I’m the only living player from my session left.  
TT: Maybe you know what to do?  
TT: Or maybe you don’t.  
TT: Or you don’t feel like telling me.  
TT: ...  
TT: Get in touch.  
  
\-- tentacleTherapist [TT] ceased pestering grimAuxilliatrix [GA] \--  
  
Rose shut the lid, threw an arm over her eyes, and softly moaned in pain at her cramping stomach. Soon enough, she was fast asleep.  
  
The whispers were amicable, as far as one could describe them so; they had been telling her what she had needed to know for so long, voices more familiar now than any of her friends (whose voices were mosaics of sample snatched from mixes shared over the miles.) Most regrettably, their voices were more familiar than even her mother’s. What was not familiar was the sensation of their arms holding her to them.  
  
They suspended her, ever-moving, catching her wrestled circumvention and nestling more arms against her to hold her still. She flinched when, softly, kind and slowly, a tentacle curled at the nape of her neck, smoothing the cropped hair that now grew back in tufts. Rose struggled to look over her shoulder, pulled her arms violently to no avail, and for her troubles she received a digit fondling her at her cheekbone.  
  
Like quicksand, the tentacles allowed Rose, so long as she did not struggle against their own rippling passage. There was no light, so she started by teasing a hand from its grasp, then pulled a small appendage into her hand to sense it by touch. Laying there, curling languidly, she drew a finger tentatively across its surface. It was not covered in suckers, as she had vaguely expected of them, but rather fairly flat and covered in minute nodules across its surface.  
  
“stell'bsna gof'n, phlegeth-nyth shogg-nyth. hafh'drn n'gha hlirgh 'bthnkk fm'latgh. orr'e li'hee y'hahh.”  
  
“I shall do what I can.” She had, after all, precious little else to do.  
  
***  
  
She awoke in a mess of sheets tangled around her legs. Her head was foggy and a sour smell of decomposing fruit hung in the air. Her hubtop had fallen onto the floor as she’d dreamt and now, for want of something better to do, she checked it once more.  
  
\-- tentacleTherapist [TT] began pestering grimAuxilliatrix [GA] \--  
  
TT: You still seem to be online.  
TT: I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and continue.  
TT: Even if I’m only talking to myself...  
TT: Ignoring the questions arising regarding my sanity.  
TT: Which up to this point is surviving relatively intact, given the circumstances.  
TT: I’m rambling.  
TT: Anyway, I’ve gathered a large amount of information so far which as yet remains unpublished due to the inexplicably selective internet access here on LOLAR.  
TT: I won’t spoil the surprise though.  
TT: What I mean is I don’t remember I’m residually inebriated.  
TT: Don’t be a stranger.  
  
\-- tentacleTherapist [TT] ceased pestering grimAuxilliatrix  [GA]  \--  
  
Rose had slept long enough that she was now hungry; her mouth was cotton-sticky and she had drank the glass of water last night. She drew the curtains, and squinted against the bright light of the land. Making her way through to the kitchen, she found a can of beans in a cupboard and alchemized them with a drawing of some bread and a hunk of cheese that had lay beneath a kitchen counter for longer than Rose cared to consider. The resulting meal was edible and more than the sum of its humble origins thanks to Rose’s grist stash. Impatiently she pulled her computer from her captchalogue, where she found her pesterlog was active:  
  
\-- tentacleTherapist [TT]  began pestering tentacleTherapist  [TT]  \--  
  
TT: Rose?  
TT: Kanaya is away from her computer right now but I will happily pass on a message.  
TT: This isn’t Kanaya in case you’re wondering.  
TT: Although I honestly am disappointed. I thought we’d left our skepticism behind when Shit Got Real.  
TT: But there we go.  
TT: This is weird for me, too.  
TT: Especially as I can’t see you on a viewport. In fact I’m putting an enormous amount of trust into this right now. It would be all sorts of embarrassing if Dave was trolling me.  
TT: Whatever that word even means now.  
TT: I wouldn’t put it past him, the tasteless varmint.  
TT: I don’t remember this conversation happening, if it is you.  
TT: Or me?  
TT: Or have I happened across, mirabile dictu, a future self?  
TT: You’re giving yourself a little more credit than is perhaps custom, given that it is I who happened across you.  
TT: She speaks!  
TT: Indeed I do.  
TT: I’ll type in a different colour, to stave off any confusion.  
TT: Does it suit me?  
TT: Is the Kanaya alien there? I think this elephant in the room would be much better acknowledged by someone other than ourselves.   
TT: That would be advisable. I’ll make myself scarce, too, before she gets any auspicitudinal ideas.  
  
\-- tentacleTherapist [TT]  ceased pestering tentacleTherapist [TT]  \--  
  
  
??? tentacleTherapist [?TT]  RIGHT NOW opened memo on board ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM.  
  
??? grimAuxilliatrix [?GA] ?:??HOURS FROM NOW responded to memo.  
  
CURRENT tentacleTherapist  [CTT] AT ?:?? responded to memo.  
  
?GA: Where Did This Other Rose Come From  
CTT: It’s a pleasure to finally speak with you again, too. You’re Kanaya, then?  
?GA: Yes That Is Who You Are Speaking To  
?GA: Seeing As Rose Revealed My True Other Worldly Nature  
?GA: But You Are Not Rose  
CTT: Glaring questions are rearing their ugly heads. Starting with how Your Rose became Your Rose.  
CTT: Do I smell romance?  
CTT: Have the dread rivals put their differences aside and ventured well beyond the Friendship that was once proposed?  
?GA: Perhaps  
?GA: Perhaps It Is None Of Your Concern Fake Rose  
CTT: Seemingly not. I was trying to illicit a rendez-vous regarding information which could be of use.  
CTT: I’d go to my dark-spectacled friend in most circumstances, but he has left me alone in a barren universe so I am not especially endeared towards him at this present point.  
?GA: Oh I See How It Is  
?GA: Past Rose  
?GA: Or Should I Say  
?GA: Rose Human  
CTT: That is indeed my name. Try not to erode it.  
CTT: Wait that didn’t work so well.  
CTT: Forget I said that.  
?GA: Rose Human Are You Okay  
CTT: I said forget I said it, I know it wasn’t funny.  
  
[CTT] banned herself from responding to memo.  
  
  
Talking to people, Rose had found in three conversations, was more exhausting than she remembered. Even when Dave had been around (but countable weeks since), they had spoken with less and less frequency. She worked hard, pillaging her land until she knew everything she could glean: the Green Sun lay in the centre of the Furthest Ring, it was the source of the First Guardian’s powers- this cryptic piece of information was yet to be framed by Rose- and its effigy was lying on a vast captchalogue card on the rubble of what was the turtle temple. In four months there she had learnt to take pleasure in ripping the planet asunder, and making Skaia pay for what it had done to her, and to her friends, and to how many others. I had torn her world apart, first, and she was only finishing off the fight which it had initiated. It had killed off her mother and the human race, one by one, for the fleeting and abstract ideal of Creation. Another Creation to be shredded in turn. What was Skaia if not merciful?  
  
Her land nonetheless left her nothing to learn, and the Horrorterrors had told her all she needed to know, and much of that was so obscure that she could not understand their meaning. She was their Servant of Darkness, a Child of Information, a myriad of titles with obvious implication unbeknownst to Rose.  
  
They did, on occasion, make themselves useful. They told her that Death came to them and slew them in droves, they told her that Death would come, too, for her. Rose did not pay much mind to that at first as death would come sooner rather than later in countless and inevitable ways: she might drink her juvenile liver to destruction, her grist collection might eventually exhaust itself (despite being expansive it was not enough to feed her forever), or, most likely, she would find herself going insane (this frightened her most, so she paid little heed to it.) When she asked who the First Guardians were, they told her that they were many, and hers was Death; Death, apparently, was inescapable.  
  
****  
  
  
TT: You’re one of two “chums” online.  
TT: And one of one “chums” whom I have never seen before.  
TT: Why is that?  
Why indeed. The multiverse works in mysterious ways.  
TT: So you don’t know?  
Allow me to introduce myself.  
I am omniscient, extremely powerful, and very charming, and in another universe you call me Doc Scratch. Though it is not my real name it will serve well enough so that you may cross-reference with your alternate self and her sweetheart.  
TT: Doc Scratch you have proven yourself to be a source of knowledge and questionable reliability. Congratulations.  
TT: You mention a multiverse?  
A multiverse housing your alternate self.  
TT: And regarding this alternate self.  
TT: Do standard rules apply as they do to Time players, regarding alternate selves?  
You mean is one of you doomed to die?  
Because, at the risk of sounding too gloomy to one of such unadvanced years, we are all doomed to death. Myself included.  
TT: You speak of yourself as though you are in some way exempt from other instances I might take for granted?  
That is because I am.  
TT: And you want me to ask how?  
You’re no stranger, I believe, to beings which eschew other rules.  
TT: So I am meant to accept that you are on of them despite there being no suggestion that any one of the Old and Noble is able to use a keyboard?  
No, of course not. I wouldn’t do a young lady a disservice.  
TT: You aren’t doing anything to make yourself seem any more credible. My mother’s warned me about men like you.  
I’m not a man; how would a man survive the apocalypse which destroyed your world?  
TT: Point taken. What are you then if not a man?  
TT: A boy?  
TT: An ordinary boy?  
TT: A wonderful boy?  
TT: Am I going to get a response at all?  
TT: If you don’t mind I am surrounded by oblivion and kind of freaking out about it.  
I know.  
And I’m now asking what you intend to do about it.  
TT: I’d say curl up in a ball and cry until it goes away.  
TT: But after spending several days doing just that all I have for it is a hangover so bad I have cramp in places I didn’t know got cramp.  
TT: Maybe I don’t mind oblivion, comparatively.  
No, it’s terrifying you. I know this because I am omniscient.  
There’s only one thing to do.  
TT: …  
TT: …  
TT: Yes?  
But now is not the time.  
  
***  
  
Following this Rose’s connection failed. With the sudden interruption came a nostalgia for a time before the game. Connection had been bad then, the weather of upstate New York and the location of her home at odds with Earth’s technology. In the days where she could not connect to her friends Rose would amuse herself by knitting more items with which she would decorate her floor, or with tawdry one-ups on her mother. Her mother, who Rose had not seen for months. She might have searched for her, but she had been distracted for too long and she was scared of what she might find.  
  
The worst nights were the ones when her mind wandered from her bed to the turtle temples. These were already inhabited by the remains of her consorts, and rumbled softly with the song of Cetus, restlessly pacing LOLAR’s ocean. It was here, in these imaginary temples where her body oscillated like a soprano’s glass, that she found her mother’s bones. Her mother’s bones curled fetal, kept warm by only a scarf. It reminded Rose of a picture she had seen of Pompeii, of a dog contorted in the pain it had felt in its last moments.  
  
Rose ventured outside less and less often. Instead she alchemized books: she had enough to combine with each other, then with each of those devoured she would combine them with other items- a bottle of LOLAR’s water with an encyclopedia, a dictionary with her Grimoire, a book with a questionable jacket from under her mother’s bed with a statue of a wizard.  
  
Once upon a time Rose had enjoyed knitting, her wrists strained from repetitive movement. Once upon a time she had enjoyed writing, and had hidden a small library beneath her bed of tasteless trysts between elderly wizards. She no longer enjoyed these things. If you had asked Rose afterwards how she amused herself she would find it hard to produce an answer.  
  
***  
  
When all else failed Rose would trek around her land for as long as she could, sometimes on foot, sometimes by air, searching for a logic-defying hotspot. Sometimes, with providence and perseverance on her side, she might find it.  
  
There she would huddle close, shaking in anticipation, fingertips cold with the potential of another being to talk to. She would leave her cumbersome laptop at home and use only her hubtopband, then hold herself in a ball and her teeth sinking into her soft, chapped lip.  
  
\-- tentacleTherapist [TT] began pestering grimAuxilliatrix [GA] \--  
  
TT: Am I so morally repugnant that you don’t wish to initiate conversation with me ever?  
GA: Partly  
GA: I Am Also Hindered By A Condition Called Not Caring  
GA: We Have Enough To Worry About Here  
TT: Really? I was under the impression that the only thing you were worrying over were which undergarments would most subtly invite my alternate self into them.  
GA: I don’t remember being so shrewish aged 13.  
TT: I’m sure you don’t remember being left alone this long, either.  
GA: But would it kill you to be a little more civil. It’s embarrassing.  
TT: How quaint.  
GA: We’d talk to you of our own accord but you don’t appear on either of our clients unless you speak to us first.  
GA: Which isn’t helped by your few surfacings.  
TT: The connection here is changeable.  
TT: Speaking of which I do have an agenda and the unpredictably of my internet is causing me great anxiety.  
TT: Have you heard of the Handmaid?  
GA: No, I haven’t. It seems Kanaya has, however.  
GA: If you’re nice you can have her a moment.  
TT: I won’t keep her long.  
GA: How Do You Know About Her?  
TT: An acquaintance gave me a lesson in Alternian mythology.  
TT: Apparently she is very foxy.  
TT: ;)  
GA: The Handmaid Is An Alternian Personification Of Death  
GA: Some Do Say She Is Foxy  
GA: She Is Said By Others To Come In Your Last Moment To Carry You To The Other Side  
GA: Yet More Say She Will Find You When You Are As Close To Death As You Will Ever Be  
GA: And She Will Tell You A Secret Which Will Make The World Make Sense  
GA: And Others Still Say She Has A Different Purpose Altogether  
GA: They Say That She Is The Cause Of All Suffering  
GA: And Immortal As She Is  
GA: That Alternia Will Never Be Free  
  
\-- tentacleTherapist [TT] ceased pestering grimAuxilliatrix [GA] \--  
  
  
***  
  
Other times, very very rarely, one of her devices would light up and she would be contacted by Doc Scratch.  
  
You’ve thought of something to ask me.  
TT: Does your omnipotence know no bounds?  
Very few. Ask your question.  
TT: Am I your first?  
My first protege?  
No. You’re one of a handful. But you’re my only human. Your friend Kanaya belongs to my race of choice, but you remind me of them.  
TT: And what happened to the others?  
They each received what they desired.  
TT: And so I’ll get what I desire, too?  
The pattern would suggest so.  
TT: And what do I desire?  
To prove yourself. To have a second chance at winning.  
  
  
Winning had not been something Rose had considered in a while. It had seemed naive to think of winning as a word allowed for her. She had thought winning had left her world along with John, its shadow had been snuffed like Jade’s, and its ghost had retreated with Dave. Now the promise of winning revealed itself and Rose was insatiable. She paced her house, she alchemized bottles and smashed each one while laughing in unrestrained joy. Her teeth clattered together and she had no stomach to eat. Her chat client would flicker online, then offline, teasing her one hundred times a day. When it flickered once she would reconfigure her hubtop until she snapped it shut in frustration, and then she would open it once more in wait.  
  
TT: Are you there?  
I’m always here.  
TT: How reassuring.  
TT: Tell me how to win.


	2. II

_"I saw pale kings and princes too,_  
 _Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;_  
 _They cried—“La Belle Dame sans Merci_  
 _Hath thee in thrall!”_  
\- **Troll Germaine Greer**

Her land was a fragile one. It could be pulled apart with only a pair of wands, and flinched away from dark magic even as dark magic was forced upon it. When a ship, larger than Cetus herself, landed in the lake and leaked mustard blood in pools onto its surface the planet gave a creak of despair. The chitinous exterior opened and from within came a mass of tangled hair which struck the water, the sand, the ground beneath her feet. The Condesce walked through LOLAR as though it was her own, and, in some ways, it would be.

Rose knew she was coming. Stuttering to herself she pulled open her laptop and logged onto pesterchum. Nobody was online. She tried Kanaya. Kanaya wasn’t there. She traced Kanaya’s IP. Her IP wasn’t there. She tried Dave. Dave wasn’t there. She screamed for Dave. Dave wasn’t there. She cursed Dave and she called for Dave and she shut her mouth when she saw what was on the horizon.

The Condesce strode towards her, raising her trident. Rose held her needles in shaking hands, unmoving, waiting to be struck down where she stood. She was taller than Rose had imagined, twice the size of her even without her horns, but her back slumped in her old age. Her horns, ancient as they were, cracked and peeled. The Condesce advanced and Rose forced herself into an offensive stance. The Condesce advanced and held a prong to her throat, slowly as though trying not to scare her.

“If you were wise you’d want me to kill you.” Rainbow light spilt onto Rose’s face, so close to the other. The strobing gave her a headache but she did not look away. The Condesce was multicentenarian and merciless; she had been raised in bloodshed and never left it. Rose would not submit to her for a second. She scratched Rose’s neck, beneath her jaw. A line of crimson kissed its way down to her back, disappearing beneath her shirt.

“If I were wise I probably wouldn’t listen to white text on screen. But desperate times call for desperate measures.” Rose held her breath, aimed, and shot the Condesce in the stomach. She staggered, seeking assistance from her weapon, but buckled and fell onto her back. The majykk created a hole through her abdomen, tyrian blood colouring her insides which now spilled onto the silver sand.

“Don’t you wonder why I came for you to kill me.” Blood covered her rows of teeth and spills over thin lips painted pink. The skin on her face looked tough, grey and thick as a shark’s, wrinkled like old leather and verdigris in the folds where algae accumulated. “Didn’t you wonder why I’d give up my riches for my mother’s abyss? Do you think, child, that I’m doing this for the halibut?” The Condesce’s eyes narrowed mirthfully behind her goggles, golden sclera surrounding magenta irises unclouded by rheum or anopsia. Wide pupils that let light in, and had done so for longer than Rose would know.

“I hadn’t given you that much thought.” Rose listened to the last whistle-snap of air as it left the Condesce’s thorax. Her exoskeleton shivered, rattling like a giggle, and she was still.

And then the air was knocked from Rose’s lungs. She felt as though something had hit her sternum, cracking her ribs, and she doubled over. Her black clothes soaked up Tyrian blood, growing heavy with its weight, her sash darkening and sticking to her. She had landed on the Condesce with a crunch, and pushed herself away. She curled into a ball and panted for breath, her fingers snatching at the sand for something to hold onto. When she opened her eyes, her vision tunnelled from a pressure behind her orbitals. Colours swirled in her periphery, unkind and intense. When Rose brought her fingers to her temples she could see nothing and her bones felt as though they were stretching to accommodate something in her eye sockets.

She heard her skull crack and groan itself back together. The brightness of her land made her head spin, her head throbbed against its confines, her eyeballs ached and throbbed with the pressure. With apprehension she brought her fingers to her eyelids and felt two large, hard balls, wet and sticky with blood that poured down her cheeks. She fell onto her side and gagged until her stomach was empty. She slept on the beach, half-hoping the tide would take her away.

***  
Rose woke up, woozily drawing herself onto two legs. And as soon as she was up she was falling, she grew cold and fell into a darkness she had not seen aggregate. She knew where she was immediately. The arms caught her, tongues kissing her face, her arms, her shins and knees and thighs. She batted them away, hitting her hand on something- in the dim light it was white and porous, a dish-shaped rhamphotheca with a jagged edge, opening its maw.

“nog ch'ron n'ghanyth.”

She thought of Dave, of his dread at the High and Noble. She thought of Dave and she screamed until her throat gave out.

***

“So.” She looked around them, seated in a room surrounded by bookshelves. In front of her was a short being with a large cue ball for a head. The room itself was viridian, exclusively and overwhelmingly. A study in emerald. Interior design was, it appeared, a science.

“So.” Doc Scratch agreed.

“I’m yours now?”

“Not mine, no. I’m an equal of yours, of sorts. Think of me as a mentor. A guardian, if you will. Even a doctor, if you like, for the state of your game. It remains that we are both in servitude to one Lord, and that you are a novice in this respect. Maybe you could think of yourself as my ward.”

“Could you explain my eyes?”

“Of course, Seer.” He sat further into his chair, and poured his tea into its saucer. The action confused Rose, who considered how he might drink it.It was all a fucking farce and this realisation expressed itself in the arch of Rose's raised eyebrow.

He looked into the patterns of the leaves, or seemed to by his bent shoulders. He passed it to her, after a while. The brown sludge formed patterns of crows and clubs, the arm of a Noble One, a circle, a pair of swords, or wands. “You have partial Sight, just as I have omniscience. However you do not have my privileges seeing as you are not a First Guardian. You see the world from the third person because it is the power the Lord has granted you.”

“It seems somewhat redundant. I can see as well as before, from a different perspective.”

“Precisely. But it also means you do not forget to whom you belong.”

Rose was silent a moment. On a tray beside their chairs lay a cup of steaming tea for her. She picked it up, holding the saucer below it. It was fragrant and bitter, a violet brown unlike any tea she had seen on Earth. She expected Scratch served it to rile her.

“It’s Alternian, a grubtea made of ceruleans fed royal jelly. Despite this whole debacle I have always had a fondness for the planet, I do hope you don’t mind.”

She looked at him as she touched the liquid to her lips. She lapped at it with her tongue, and gasping when it burnt her and she dropped it in a trail of steam. The cup clattered into the saucer and rolled its contents into her lap. She let out a yelp, a jump of surprise, rose to her feet and set the china down. The liquid rolled off her lap and onto the floor, her skirt soaking most of it up before it hit her skin. The fabric of her dress soaked the tea into its dark folds, weighting the material and reflecting the luminous green light of the room. She froze standing, drawing shaky breaths and balling her fists in the abeyance.

“Would you like to change?”

A lump in Rose’s throat bobbed, and she pursed her lips. She peeled the filmy skirt from where it stuck to her thighs. “You have something in mind? Something more comfortable for me to slip into?”

“You could say that.”

“And where will I find it?”

“In your bedroom, on the dresser to your left when you walk in.”

“And will you be joining me?”

“Years of isolation have made you brazen, haven’t they?”

Rose’s cheek twitched, her lip upturned on one side. The skirt clung to her thighs as she walked, sticking and unsticking itself from each leg with each stride. She left the room slowly, with each step a deliberate exercise in performance, her audience finally found. When she turned the corner of the threshold she took each stair two at a time, finding her room hastily and leaving her clothes in a pile on the floor. What she found as a replacement was a green uniform, a short skirt and a green silk top with a squiddle embroidered onto the left breast.

She had been a Light player. She had been because she was no longer. The shadow of Void curled at her ankles as a constant companion, a reminder of what she was. An anti-Rose, a mirror-image. She imagined going downstairs and Doc Scratch christening her- Ofnick, Bilhah, Ancilla Diaboli, Proditrix. A multitude of names to fit her station, and her fate.

But the idea was ridiculous, to think that she would be renamed. She was Rose, and not another Rose. Her own Rose, and one with an important job to do. To allow Scratch to dictate her path would be blasphemous. Enslaved was an apt descriptor, but willing was not. To run from this would not be cowardly. The Horrorterrors loaned her the weapons she needed- her wands, and the fenestrations through their realm. Lord English, her overseer (not master), entrusted her with His own manifestations. Immortality. She was old as the sun, now. But she was not his.

***

Rose fled into the arms of her revered Gods. She grew more comfortable with each visit, to worship and adore them. She let them mold her, and soon without prompting she would pour prayers upon them.

“You have my loyalties. I swear on my mother’s bones. I will fight until I die for our victory, as long as I can rely upon your support.”

Her reward was a caress, a soft kiss to the child’s cheek.

Then her vision clouded, the shadows curling at the edges. They did not carry her fast enough through the fenestration for her to miss a monstrous green figure slaughter a member of the Noble Circle with a noise that left her eyes aching as though they would fall out her head, and leave her dead in their wake.

***

The green figure was replaced by light, an all-engulfing source of lime-green that would have burned her, had she not been dead already. She did not look away, wishing for a viridian wash to take away what she had seen. Behind her, in the light of the Green Sun, she saw two figures- one in red, the other dripping golden.

“Aradia.”

The girl was grey and dimpled and the kindest sight Rose had set eyes upon in far too long. She held the hand of a boy, his hair like dandelion fluff sticky with blood. He rattled when he breathed with a docile smile. His eyes were different colours, shaded by goggles from light he couldn’t see. The blood down his cheeks meant that Rose tried her best to ignore him.

“Aradia, do you know what He is?”

“You aren’t the Handmaid we were expecting.”

“And you knew her?”

“One of them. There were stories that we were of the same blood, and the more I hear the more inclined I am to believe them.”

“She’s gone now.” Aradia nodded.

“Who do we work for?”

“The Handmaids?”

“Yes, us. Who is it? I hear His name but I never see Him.”

“You don’t know His real name, but it’s better that way. Bad juju.” She winked, and the humour was lost on all present. “You know Him as Lord English. I’ve met another like him, only once. She’s hard to find. But she told me enough.”

“Tell me.”

“There’s not much.”

“I said tell me.” Rose’s eyes flickered.

“He’s a cherub. They’re alien to us both. They’re heavy-built, bald, noseless. They sound terrifying but that’s really just down to who’s looking. I’ve spent enough time around bones that I don’t really care much! That said His reputation precedes him and I’d be fairly terrified by that alone. What’s more unsettling is their way of life- to us, being social species. They’re entirely asocial, they come together only to mate.

"They seek to destroy, creating a safe environment for themselves and other that evacuate the area. It usually doesn’t take more than half a planet to sate their need for solitude. Lord English, however, had the game at His disposal. He played it and became what he is now- powerful in His being but also in His potential. The game gives him the ability to not only destroy a planet, but multiple universes.”

“He wants the multiverse destroyed.”

“Including any offshoot timelines.”

“And so any destruction I cause is exactly what he wants.”

Sollux drew in a breath and spat "Too fucking right, but it's not like any of us have much choice at the rate he's going." Aradia hushed him with a hand to his cheek, wiping blood from his lips and whispering something. Then she turned to Rose and said over her shoulder,

"We have our plans. He's under control."

It was cold; not unkind, but resigned. Taking her leave, Rose thanked Aradia, and slipped back through the Furthest Ring.

***

 

\-- gallowsCalibrator [GC] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] \--

GC: ROS3   
GC: ROS3 4R3 YOU TH3R3?   
GC: ROS3 1 KNOW YOU 4R3 TH3R3   
TT: You got me.   
GC: 1 KN3W 1T >:]   
TT: Terezi is this important. I’m not much up to talking right now.   
GC: OF COURS3 1TS 1MPORT4NT YOU SCURR1LOUS H4RPY   
TT: …   
TT: Well?   
GC: OK 1 KNOW YOU H4V3 4 PL4N   
GC: 1 KNOW WH4T YOUR3 L1K3   
GC: CORR3CT1ON 1 KNOW WH4T 4LT3RN4T3 P4ST YOU 1S L1K3 >;]   
TT: Moving on.   
GC: 4CTU4LLY TH1S 1S WH3R3 YOU T3LL M3 WH4T YOUR PL4N 1S   
TT: I think the word plan is a little ostentatious. In fact I’m not sure if I’m even comfortable considering it a formulated thought at this juncture.   
GC: 1M SUR3 1 H4V3 H34RD WORS3   
GC: 1N F4CT 1 KNOW 1 W1LL H4V3 DON3 1N R3TROSP3CT   
GC: H4V3 YOU S33N TH3 BODY COUNT OF OUR S3SS1ON BLUH   
TT: Yes.   
TT: Yes, I have.   
TT: It’s a miracle you got as far as you did.   
GC: T3LL M3 4BOUT 1T!!!!!!!!   
GC: SORRY TH4T ON3 GOT 4W4Y FROM M3 >:[   
TT: Why don’t you tell me your plan first.   
TT: Quid pro quo, &c.   
GC: 1TS JUST   
GC: TH3 LONG3R W3 GO ON 4ND TH3 MOR3 T1M3L1N3S TH4T POP 1NTO 3X1ST3NC3 TH3 H4RD3R TH3 CONC3PT OF OBL1V1ON B3COM3S TO 1GNOR3   
GC: 4ND 4T TH1S PO1NT 1 TH1NK TH4T WH3TH3R W3R3 MOT1V4T3D BY G3NU1N3 S4CR1F1C3 OR TH3 N33D TO 3SC4P3 3V3RYTH1NG TH4TS H4PP3N3D DO3SNT R34LLY M4TT3R   
GC: W3 4LL JUST W4NT OUT WH1CH 1S WHY YOU SHOULD T3LL M3 YOUR PL4N 8^y   
GC: ON TOP OF TH4T TH3R3S TH3 P4R4DOX TH4T TH3 MOR3 W3 TH1NK OF OUR 1MP3ND1NG DOOM TH3 MOR3 C3RT41N 4N UNF4VOUR4BL3 OUTCOM3 B3COM3S   
GC: 3V3RYTH1NG W3 3XP3R13NC3 1S OUR OWN DO1NG   
GC: 4ND NO OUTCOM3 V1S1BL3 TO M3 1S ON3 TH4TS R34LLY TH4T S4T1SFY1NG   
GC: 1M MOSTLY JUST R34LLY S1CK OF TH1S G4M3   
GC: 1 GU3SS TH4T W4S K1ND OF W31RD OFFLO4D1NG ON YOU   
GC: 1 M34N W3 DONT 3V3N KNOW 34CH OTH3R >:/   
GC: 1 JUST M34N TH4T 1 DONT 3X4CTLY H4V3 4 PL4N 31TH3R   
TT: I get it.   
TT: It’s nice to have someone new to talk to.   
TT: You mentioned your Sight. Mine’s never manifested itself as obviously as your own.   
GC: YOU H4RDLY 3MBR4C3 TH3 SP1R1T OF L1GHT   
GC: BUT YOUR3 R1GHT 1 H4V3 S33N 4 LOT   
GC: UNCOMFORT4BLY 3NOUGH THOUGH MY S1GHT H4S ONLY UND3RM1N3D MY 4SP3CT   
GC: WH3N 3V3RYON3 H3R3 K3PT DY1NG MY V1S1ON W4S N4RROW3D 4ND SO K1LL1NG VR1SK4 S33M3D L1K3 MY ONLY OPT1ON   
GC: BUT 1 DONT R34LLY W4NT TO T4LK 4BOUT TH4T   
TT: It’s not a problem. I find killing people has that effect on me, too.   
TT: My humblest apologies but I really need to sort something out.

\-- tentacleTherapist [TT] ceased pestering gallowsCalibrator [GC] \--

Terezi stepped away from the hubtop, closed the dusty lid and returned to Dave. He was sat in the centre of a standard mural, his red cape trailing in chalk dust, looking to Terezi and rising onto his knees.

“Who the hell is there left to talk to in this god forsaken unihearse?”

“I just wanted to try something out.”

“Shit, you didn’t.” He snapped languidly.

“I didn’t do anything!” They had lain on their backs as they spoke, and now rolled onto their elbows. Dave picked his stick of chalk back up again first, then Terezi. They starting by drawing lone figures in onesies feasting upon banquets of tex-mex delicacies, fed burritos by leggy broads dubiously referred to as Mom.

“You so did, Jesus dick. I could feel the happiness being sucked from the zone the second you opened the laptop. What will it take for you all to leave that good for nothing demon-spawn well alone.”

“She’s as much demon-spawn as Lady Prissy-Parma Violet Number One.”

“No I think you will find that as the Knight of Time I am uniquely qualified to recognise that alternate selves are undeniably fucking weird and also a one way ticket to the great bone orchard in the sky. Her especially.” With chalk sticks weary and depleting, their scribbles became more and more furious, the characters rising from their triclinia to launch storms of nachoes onto their adversaries. Clones of SBAHJ were summoned and assembled in armies, and sent into battle- salsa and sour cream spurted from limb-stumps and eye-sockets.

“Whatever, asshole. You are pirouetting right off the handle of dillholitude >:[ “

Terezi and Dave’s hands scrambled for valuable drawing space in the carnage, their implements snapping and the artists devolving into an entanglement of limbs painted in pastel smudges. Terezi crawled atop Dave, lapping at his cheek, his jaw, his neck. A hand found a waist, migrated to cup a handful of ass. A pair of lips found purchase on a collarbone. Dave threw off his glasses to kiss her, a hand in her hair and another on her jaw. She rolled him on top of her and wrapped short legs around his slender waist, she squealed in delight and opened her mouth to him. His hips pressed hard at her own. Dave licked a long stripe across her palate to make her squirm.

“Seriously, TZ, why’d you have to go talk to her.” It was a whispered plea in the warm space that held them safe.

She answered by dragging a claw under his chin. Movements swapped between them were a dialogue of memories and learnt sequences. A bite to the ear led to a hand between soft thighs. A throaty moan led to a hand beneath a shirt to claw at pebbled nipples and a xylophone of ribs. A chalk stick was ingested and exchanged between mouths, much to the amusement of one party and distress of the other. Hacking a globule of spit onto the concrete beneath them, Dave pushed himself off Terezi, who smacked her lips in abandon.

“Dave! Why did you just ruin that glorious moment of unprecedented macking, you massive homo tool!” She sidled up to him, sinking hands into the soft fabric and nipping at his lip.

“Because I was done with it, I can hear you thinking about Rose from here and it’s unsettling as freaking fuck. I’ve got enough of her questioning my sexual tendencies without having you encourage them.” Terezi’s eyes widened, she placed a hand on his shoulder and dragged her teeth along the shell of his ear. “I mean her!”

“Strider, I know you think of Rose every time. Besides that doesn’t even make sense.” To which Dave bit on his cheek and moaned in despair. Terezi bared her teeth, her laugh a shriek of air erupting from her nose and a jostle of external skin plates. Dave shat himself. Terezi was fucking terrifying.

“Did I hear my name?”

“This is not,” Dave cried, scrambling for his glasses, “a convention for weird-ass harridans!”

“Dave, please.”

“Was I interrupting something, Terezi?” Rose leant against the doorframe, her lip caught between her teeth and pulled into a smile. She pushed her hair behind her ear and raised an eyebrow at Dave. Dave would have blanched, but was hardened after the sweeps spent in their collective company. Instead he simply slumped and continued drawing.

“We were simply discussing the joys of your company and how we are all the better off for it.”

“Oh, Terezi, you flatter me, you licentious fiend.”

“And Dave was bemoaning your presence. Do not fear, however, as a thorough defence was promptly chartered by the most esteemed Neophyte you see before you.”

“The accomplished Practitioner of the Dark Arts extends a token of gratitude in the form of a flimsy handkerchief, and a coquettish peck to the Neophyte’s cheek. The Practitioner also inquires after the health of the young Minstrel of Sweet Rhymes who has presently turned a most unbecoming shade of green.”

“Urgh. He’s just being a shithead.”

“Beyond his usual shitheadedness?”

“Above and beyond! He’s stroppy as a wriggler and soft as one to boot. Careful, Dave, or you’ll give me as many earth complexes as you.”

“Terezi, will you shut up. And Rose would it kill you to keep your nose out of my business for once.” Dave had risen to his feet, and as he spoke he placed a hand self-consciously to his neck. “I just want to chill and not think about you getting your freak on at my space girlfriend. And also not encourage my space girlfriend to pick up your disturbing habits.”

“Dave stop mumbling, it’s so unattractive.” Rose raised her hand, as though to stroke his cheek.

“Just get out our space. Christ, you don’t even know what she was doing or how fucking wrong it is that you’re all over your monster self. She’s bad news, you mindless dick. I’ve seen enough alternate selves to know that every single one ends up at Cadaverburg, Deadsville. You don’t know what you’re getting into. ”

“You’ve spoken to her, too?” Rose turned to Terezi.

“Yeah but she’s so cryptic and depressing. I don’t know what happened but I’m so glad we’re stuck with this Rose.”

“Okay well whatever you talk about crypto-Rose somewhere else but stick a fork in me I’m ollying outy.”

“Neither of those phrases were ever funny, coolkid!”

Rose rolled her eyes at Terezi, who pulled her lips back from her teeth in indignation as Dave left the room. They remained quiet for some time, Rose sitting on the floor where it was free of chalk and looking over to a distant corner where a pair of horns disappeared behind a chest. Terezi noticed her line of gaze but didn’t investigate.

***

Some time later, after three consecutive periods of sleep, Terezi opened her husktop. She was in what had once been a secret room, where the deceased had roamed and had now left their wand piles. It was grim, but quiet. Dave wouldn’t find her and whine in fear. She signed into Trollian and saw nothing. No user was online. In fact, the sheer number of offline users was a distasteful reminder of precisely why so many were absent. TT was offline, but there was no reminder of why for her. Terezi did not know.

 

\-- tentacleTherapist [TT] began pestering gallowsCalibrator [GC] \--

TT: Is Terezi there?   
GC: M4YB3   
TT: I’m sorry about last time. Something came up.   
TT: Out of interest, has a member of your party gone missing recently?   
GC: OH NO   
TT: Well   
TT: That explains one thing.   
TT: Anyway.   
TT: How well do you know the dreambubbles?   
GC: YOU DO NOT 3V3N KNOW ROS3   
GC: YOU DO NOT 3V3N KNOW   
GC: TH3 H4VOC TH4T TH3YR3 C4US1NG   
TT: Okay, then. Hear me out.   
TT: You want my plan, here is my plan.   
TT: Please consider whilst I divulge that I have exhausted every other possibility and this is the only way I think this could work.   
TT: We know now that dying doesn’t mean much. And that once we’re dead we’re as good as immortal.  
TT: I say we but I mean you; I’m effectively immortal and can navigate paradox space at will.  
TT: But this would, potentially, come in very useful for those of us who aren’t god tier already.  
TT: We’d all be in one place.  
TT: In a sense of the word.  
TT: The meteor passes through the dreambubbles, but if you were all dead you’d stay there. You’d know where you were.  
TT: I need you all together to defeat Lord English.  
TT: I know its risky and doesn’t make all that much sense but I’ve been meditating on it for years, or what may as well be counted as such.  
GC: OTH3R ROS3 YOU 4R3 4PP4LL1NG  
GC: WH3N W3 F1RST GOT H3R3 VR1SK4 W4NT3D TO GO THROUGH W1TH 4 PL4N TH4T WOULD K1LL US 4LL  
GC: NOBODY WOULD W1N BUT H3R  
GC: 4T TH3 T1M3 1 KN3W TH3R3 W4S 4 B3TT3R W4Y OF DO1NG TH1NGS 4ND 1 S4W HOW 1T WOULD 3ND  
GC: 1 M3NT1ON3D 4 VR1SK4 4ND 1T 1S MY S4D DUTY TO 1NFORM YOU OF WHY  
GC: BUT 4S W3 GO ON LONG3R 4ND TH3 UN1V3RS3 S33MS TO GROW MOR3 CH4OT1C  
GC: 4ND W3 S33 TH3 D34D P1L1NG UP N33DL3SSLY 1 JUST W4NT TH3 G4M3 TO B3 OV3R  
GC: YOU R3M1ND M3 OF H3R  
GC: 1N YOUR R3CKL3SSN3SS 4S W3LL 4S YOUR RUTHL3SS COMP3T3NC3  
TT: So you trust me?  
GC: 4T MY P3RIL >:\

\-- tentacleTherapist [TT] ceased pestering gallowsCalibrator [GC] \--

She left it then. She pulled herself onto the most comfortable wand pile and decaptchaloged her dragon cape to pull it over herself. The hood made a comfortable pillow, and the shade of red was bright enough to comfort with familiarity, soft enough to surround her in forgetful warmth. Sleep tugged at her eyelids and she found little reason to resist it; sopor was sticky anyway. Human habits rubbed off too quick.

***

Karkat surfaced from the transportalizer. He called over to her and found Terezi chirping peacefully. She must have been exhausted. He spared some moments looking fondly at her, biting his lip for all the things he hadn’t said. She smiled in her sleep, and he did, too. Then he looked at her hubtop. He read the screen.

He left her like that, after tucking her cape around her, then he had left. Rose, or whatever it was she had spoken to, had asked after Gamzee. Not-Rose was not on the meteor, and if she was asking after Gamzee Karkat thought, perhaps, that Gamzee wasn’t either. This was not a thought that he enjoyed entertaining. Gamzee was AWOL, and had been far too long for Karkat to even pretend to think he was an effective leader. One shoosh-pap did not a moirail make.

On top of that, as he made his way through the dark corridors of the meteor, he could not remove the burning resentment in his chest. The sounds of Terezi’s shivering larynx echoed through his thinkpan. Unfortunately, the sound of Dave’s soft whimpers echoed there, too. He thought of them, a tangle of fiery-red bitten kisses and soft cheeks and feathery hair. He thought of their hands on his skin, teasing and cruel and delightful.

But this was not the time for indulging in potential polyquadrantial affairs, or fantasies of such. No, this was the swan song of leadership, a final push for the safety of the flock, and the wolf among them would be reigned in like the baby barkbeast he was. If Terezi and Not-Rose and hell only knows who else were planning without him then he would plan, too. His plan was a simple one: to search the meteor from top to bottom, and to find his better half. The truth told, Karkat could do with his moirail around. The embrace of someone tall and skinny, to wrap arms around him in his recuparacoon, to kiss his temple with words of conciliation and adoration. Such stuff as what dreams are made on, the serendipity of young moirallegiance which appeased the first adolescent thrums of bloodthirst. Or, in Karkat’s case, the accumulating thrums of adolescent angst. Gamzee, though he did not care to admit it, was a shit moirail.

In trepidation, the meteor was far larger than Karkat had previously estimated. He avoided some rooms, ones where he knew he might find Dave, or Rose. Terezi was safely asleep and he avoided her, too. He yearned a little for Kanaya, on her own, without anyone else to distract her. To sit with Kanaya’s hands in his hair whilst he spoke softly into her lap sounded heavenly. He had no idea where Kanaya was, so left the thought to suspend in his mind, to balance the fear of what he might find.

He looked methodically through small cupboards and empty halls. There was too much space for them; many empty rooms had once housed long-dead children. Such rooms were left in the state they had been left: one scattered with cuttlefish, another with posters of scantily clad furries. Karkat searched these quickly and as superficially as he allowed himself.

He reached the ecto-lab with mixed relief and nostalgia and disquiet. This place where he had started it all, in a sense caused all their misery. The equipment had mostly been decommissioned, and the creatures preserved in the huge jars decomposed in the liquid which they were suspended in. The screens showed nothing, and only the paltry remains of the ectobiology which he had divulged in were visible. The lab was full of hiding places and Karkat set to work searching each and every one. It was worth looking, he thought in the spirit of Terezi, for clues. Even if Gamzee couldn’t fit inside a drawer holding spare wires it was at least worth checking for, for a club or a message or something.

After searching all that he could he discerned that the lab was a lost cause. There was nothing but the half-formed embryos of carapaces made for the battle field. All naked, but for one. Karkat passed it with but a glance, and it took him until he reached the door to sprint back to the container and see the liquid pink with carapace blood and the softened exoskeleton of the Mayor suspended in preservative.

Karkat’s wails ricocheted from the walls in a symphony of dolor. His claws grasped at his scalp for an assurance of comfort, and when he found none he wailed some more. Nobody came for him, and he could not stand the proximity. He staggered to his feet and ran, ran, ran from the room, through transportalisers and passages and stairs where he climbed and climbed to the roof of their sanctum.

And there he found an husktop, closed and untouched for sweeps untold. There he found dried blood, indigo and righteous as was always told. There he found the blood, too, that was the colour of the sea. With trembling fingers he opened the lid, and opened Trollian. With trembling fingers he selected the most recent chat window, and highlighted the text he found there.

They were, all too right, suckers.

***

Rose shut her laptop when she heard a floorboard creak in the corner of her room.

The house was not, as Rose suspected, home to just the two of them. She had never seen a troll in its prime before, only the shell of a creature that was the Empress. This creature was, judging by its posture and its easy smile, precious little more than a boy. His teeth lay on his lower lip, sharp as glass shards promising to break the skin the moment he grew bored. His face was long and framed by a shaggy sable mane. She saw him when she entered her bedroom and saw him at her dresser, tying the bow tie of a puppet with menacingly bared teeth. He turned to her, leaving the puppet propped on the desk, and stood close enough that she had to crane her neck to see him. He crouched, his limbs lumbering and slender, to look Rose in the eye. He had three plump scars across his face, glistening silver-violet and thick. Rose was tempted to touch them, the skin looked so smooth, but his half-lidded eyes grew colder when she raised a hand.

“Handmaiden, you are ours now.”

“What do you mean-”

“You belong to the universe incarnate, the Lord of it all. You are his motherfucking maiden to do with as He pleases.”

And with that he stood up to his full height and walked away, leaving Rose to watch him turn the corner into the parlour.

She opened her computer once more, hoping to shake off the unease that had further fallen on the room.

***  
??? tentacleTherapist [?TT] RIGHT NOW opened memo on board ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM.

??? tentacleTherapist [?TT] ?:??HOURS FROM NOW responded to memo.   
?TT: Kanaya?   
?TT: You know what’s happened at a guess.   
?TT: Regarding my ascension to Handmaidenhood.   
CURRENT grimAuxilliatrix [CGA] responded to memo.   
CGA: Who Doesnt   
?TT: Kanaya I’ve been led to believe that you know my mentor.   
?TT: Or, I should say, my guardian.   
?TT: And that all of this isn’t simply puerile dabbling in Noble Majykks, it’s not just about trying to take a road less travelled for its own sake.   
CGA: Are You Suggesting Something Rose   
?TT: Only that I think you know the nature of my keeper.   
CGA: Yes Perhaps You Could Say That   
?TT: And that I plan on using this aforementioned nature against him.   
?TT: You’re well acquainted with game mechanics, I understand?   
CGA: Id Hazard That I Know Them Better Than You   
CGA: And As Such I Have Managed To Avoid Making Short Sighted Decisions   
CGA: Such As Inadvertently Joining Our Adversary   
?TT: Thank you.   
?TT: What I was saying is that I seem to have inverted my aspect- where before I was a Light player I’m now manifesting Voidly aspects.   
?TT: And I don’t think he can see what I’m doing because of it.   
CGA: And So By Association You Are Keeping Us Hidden Too   
?TT: As uncomfortable as it evidently makes you, yes.

 

***

Some journeys through the Void were so fleeting that the whispers reached her ears only when she reached her destination. The voices shook her bones, telling her that she is protected, the Void a shield to her plans. Nobody could see into their discourse, it was sacred. The Furthest Ring was a psychic vacuum. For these snippets Rose would kiss the smallest arms of the Noble Ones during her longer visits.

They were divine and beautiful as they were terrible. In another world she might have aligned with them of her own accord, struggling against the bonds of the game and its imposed fates, worshipping at their altar. They would have claimed her in rage and she would have been their agent, more willing an agent than she was now. In this world, however, they were thrown together like lovers to complete a common end. And threatened as they were, they cared only for the end itself; chaos was their domain, and so Rose adopted it as her own, too.

***

LOLAR was precisely how she remembered it. Precisely, down to the body of an alien lying on the beach, her jewellery tarnished and her horns salt-bleached. The tide licked at the skeleton’s ankles. Her clothing, made of a fabric Rose did not recognise, remained undecayed, slick and wet. Rose looked into the shallows expecting a shoal of fish to dart into the sunlight, to flash silver and remind her of New York waterfalls. The lake was lifeless.

Above her, illuminated like a lure, was the gate to her denizen. Rose stepped onto a curl of shadow, and ascended a staircase of her own making. From the air she saw the temples in ruins as she’d met them, and the deceased turtles littered across the landscape. The rain fell in lustrous rivulets, unattended.

She climbed and climbed, through Dave’s house, LOHAC, through John’s house and LOWAS. She climbed quickly, trying to ignore what she saw- houses left as though their inhabitants were in another room, lands left to the game to dispose of. If Rose looked too closely at a wall she saw it disintegrate, if she looked at a certain angle she saw the room behind it rendered in vector graphics. Climbing past Dave’s apartment she saw a crow’s skeleton, pixelated and jittery as she moved. She continued her ascension with a shroud of shadow surrounding her.

She found Cetus past the final gate, in a cave that echoed with the steady drip of a far-off spring. It smelt of lime, of damp and cold. The cave glistened, puce in a violet light, the walls rolling and rippling like strung-up innards. Lying in the centre, in a depleting pool, lay a creature whose tail lay curled around a hoard of riches. It raised its torso on Rose’s arrival, and Rose responded with a low bow.

“I’ve waited too long for you.” Her voice rumbled the cave, low and melodic. Her eyes were large, emitting light in flickers. Her face was gaunt and wrinkled, her mouth wide and hungry. When Rose raised her head, Cetus flexed a pair of haggard, bony fins, then tucked them close to her side.

“I’m here now.”

“To kill me?” Her voice was soft.

“Eventually.” Her tone was careful, checked, and measured. “Eventually I will kill you. First I would like answers.”

Cetus pulled her hoards close with her tail, and scooped a finful of water onto her body.

“May I ask you some things?”

Cetus nodded, slow and long-lived as a whale.

“Are you afraid of death?”

“I am a destroyer. Death is my home. You ought to know that, wayward Light player. I am a destroyer who desired destruction the long while.”

“You think we’re of the same ilk?”

“Why else would Skaia place us together. You’ve seen that at times destruction is unnecessary- destruction of this timeline. Destruction becomes creation. They are merely two sides of the same.”

“I have your blessing, then?”

“You do, child. Do as you may.”

Cetus closed her eyes in repose, curling herself small enough to fit into her pool entire.

Rose left the hoards in the chamber, and placed a kiss to her Denizen’s forehead in thanks. She peeled off her robes of lime and sank into the water, where she lay on her back and touched the creature at the point where white torso transitioned to purple tail. Her skin was moist, and smelt of earth and damp. Rose could not sleep, but if she could she would have stayed there forever.

***

“Scratch?”

Rose crept around the corners of the mansion in search of him. Time had passed since she’d been there last, and she heard unfamiliar footsteps deep within the apartments. She did not wish to find their owner, having seen an extra teacup lain out in the parlour, its rim gilt with blood.

She watched Scratch approach her and lay a hand on her shoulder. She turned to face him, out of politeness, and out of habit, and straightened her back.

“I want to remind you, Rose, that your plans are obvious to me, and that any rebellion will be dealt with accordingly. Your actions are but allowances.”

“And I want to remind you that I know you for what you are now. You are as manipulative as you are ignominious.”

She faced him, her mouth set in adolescent defiance, trembling in temerity. For this he reminded her that pretty words were cheap currency in his home, and summoned a broom with which he beat her until it snapped. Her bones splintered, too, and blood slid from her mouth. She pulled herself up as soon as she could, satisfied with the crimson splatter across her blouse, the torn seam of her skirt.

“You do not own me.” Her voice was uneven, and she bit her tongue at the trite statement. She bit her tongue because she was lying. Satisfied that she knew this, Doc Scratch ran a thumb over her still-swollen lip, and left to attend to his guest.


	3. III

_"We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come."_ - **Mitt Romney**

Rose appearificated behind Kanaya, who sat on a couch idly turning the pages of a novel. She looked quiet and happy and content and Rose envied her her peace of mind. The longer she stood, the less inclined she was to move. Occasionally Kanaya would shift an ankle, or stretch her neck, or smile at an especially pleasing turn of phrase. She looked older than Rose, though it was hard to quantify given the huge disparities between their respective species. But she looked older in the way she licked her lip, rolled her shoulders, closed her eyes to imagine a scene. Rose didn’t anticipate seeing the others, least of all Dave. She did not shy so much from the prospect of seeing herself. It would be a treat to see how content she was. Beside them she would look callow and unformed. She might have resigned herself to retreat (temporary, she assured herself it would be only temporary) had Kanaya not looked over her shoulder unsuspectingly and yelled.

Her yell was a wheezing shriek of air punctuated by alarmed clicks that caught Rose as off-guard as Kanaya. The huge disparities between their respective species were, evidently, unforeseen. She stumbled into a bookcase, grasping for purchase and pulling heavy tomes from their shelves instead. She landed on the floor, sprawled across a plush carpet and atop multiple volumes of Skaian Lore, and released an embarrassed sigh. Kanaya had risen to her full height and loomed over Rose, daintily Amazonian, and Rose was mortified. For a while they remained largely unmoving, save for Rose shifting books from beneath her back and avoiding Kanaya’s gaze. Only when Rose turned her face away to rub her temples did Kanaya acknowledge her beyond a horrified stare.

“It’s funny,” she said, her words measured, “how much younger you looked when we first started talking. And yet you must have looked this way when we met all that time ago.”

Rose, a moment ago abashed, was now incredulous. “Save for the eyes.”

“Well, there is that.” Kanaya’s fang caught on full lips when she smiled. “You didn’t look nearly as ghastly, either. Which is saying something.”

“Your unkind words have pierced my ailing breast and punctured my very soul.”

“Rose, your human sarcasm is showing,” she crouched beside her and pulled her up by an arm to lead her to the couch where she had sat previously. “Had you been there long?”

“Are you always this coddlesome? I was under the impression that you regarded me only with icy disdain.” Kanaya licked the pad of her finger and rubbed at chalky, pastel residue on Rose’s cheek.

“They needn’t be mutually exclusive. And besides that contempt is an exhausting emotion to maintain. Now come with me, you are filthy. What have you been doing?”

“Is it what I said about Scratch?”

“Partly, and my Rose’s meddling. You are look squalid and you smell like eggs. Did you lose your ability to stay clean along with your sanity?” Kanaya gave up on Rose’s face and pulled her up again to lead her to another room.

“I don’t want to talk about it. Where is she?” Rose tried to slow Kanaya down, to make her stop and point Rose out to her.

“Let her be for now, she’s reading some very important documents.” Kanaya pushed her along, a great deal stronger and threatening to lift her from the ground in her haste.

“Is it erotica?”

“No it isn’t and you are far too young to know what erotica is.” Kanaya pursed her lips and opened a cupboard to remove a towel, then shoved Rose further along the corridor to an appearificator.

“Surely other me has told you what we used to write.” Rose was huddled onto the appearificator and held close to Kanaya as they flashed into another room. She felt Kanaya’s cool skin beneath the fabric of her dress, the thick skin of her arms touching Rose’s cheek. Kanaya stepped off, leaving Rose stricken and still.

“I don’t give a fuck, I’m having a swell time here just chillin’ out, maxin’, relaxin’ all cool and not thinking about puppet selves used by dark forces to screw us up worse than we already are.”

“Chill your earth beans! We can still do dumb shit like orange soda enemas if you want, an extra member of the Multi-Universe Teen Death Match won’t stop us.”

“TZ who told you what an enema was.”

“You taught me!” The words were accompanied by vibrant crow of laughter.

Rose pushed Kanaya against a wall and yanked her collar close enough for Rose to reach her ear without stretching.

“Get me away from him.” The sound hissed through her teeth in a low harmony of air. Fifteen voices spoke through her in her rage.

Kanaya brought a claw up to Rose’s cheek, and bent to hush her. She took her hand from her collar and a finger to her lips. “You must be quiet. They are only heading to the transportaliser,  
in the other direction.” She didn’t ask the questions on her lips.

 

They walked into an ablution block in silence, Rose visibly shaken and Kanaya snatching glances in her direction, unaware that she could see. Rose ducked inside first, and Kanaya took the towel to lay it on a rail.

“Rose?” Kanaya leant across the ablution trap to turn on a tap.

“Don’t call me that here.”

“What would you prefer?”

“I’m not sure. I think Handmaid is best fitting, really.”

“It’s interesting you say that. Rose and I have been doing a great deal of research on the game; you’re a Derse dreamer and you’re accepting your fate?”

“I don’t need your analysis, nor do I need you watching me bathe. Get out.”

Deflated, Kanaya left the room and the Handmaid to her own devices. She waited outside the door, slumped against the wall, and listened through the door. She noticed that she had been biting at her lip during their exchange, and that her lipstick had worn off, presumably leaving an outline of jade. She reapplied it without needing a mirror, then curled a lock of hair around a thumb anxiously.

Inside the room behind her was a child years younger than herself, and any other inhabitant of the meteor, who was in the hands of Death itself. It was unlikely that she even knew it. She was bratty and rude and defensive. She spoke to the Horrorterrors with fervour, more fervour than Rose. To leave her alone would be to leave her to her thoughts, and the longer Kanaya considered what they might contain the less she wanted to leave her. Her Rose had triumphed. The Handmaid remained in the depths of the Void.

“Rose?” She called through the door, with a hopeful knock.

“Please, Kanaya. Don’t call me that.”

“Handmaid?”

“What is it?”

“May I come in?”

“We’ve only just met, but you’ve already seen me naked plenty of times, I’m sure.” 

Kanaya moved to open the door, but dropped she her fist before it met the doorknob. Blood rushed to her cheeks. “I’ll wait.” 

“Don’t be foolish. Come in.”

Kanaya looked at the floor as she entered. When she looked up and saw the Handmaid surrounded by bubbles, the foam reflecting the colours of her eyes, she was overwhelmed with remorse. Her eyes didn’t close, they never even blinked, but she looked almost at peace. Kanaya wanted to move a wisp of hair from the girl’s face, but contented herself to fiddling with her own claws. She seated herself on the floor beside her, not allowing herself to rest her head on the ablution trap’s rim.

“Ro-” She took a breath which hummed through internal pipes. “Handmaid, why won’t you see Dave?”

“Aside from protecting the poor boy’s fragile mindstate? Lord help him when he actually sees me.”

“You don’t seem to care much what others think of you most of the time.”

“It’s silly.”

“And silliness hasn’t deterred you in the past. Tell me.”

“And it doesn’t make sense- it isn’t fair on him.” She paused to submerge herself in the water. Returning to the surface she wiped her face clean and lathered her hair. “He’s not even the right Dave. But he’s still a Dave.”

“Go on.”

“You know most of it.”

“I want to hear it from you.”

“We started the game. We didn’t get too far in to start with. I mean, obviously. But John spoke to Terezi and she sent him on a suicide mission.” She paused here, too, submerging herself again to rinse her hair. “He never came back, as a suicide mission would suggest. We never heard from Jade, so I think she died along with the rest of the world. So only Dave and I were left.

“We started by going along with our missions. We collected grist and continued with our quests for as long as we could before our learning curve became a learning plateau. I began drinking, and he decided to pack it up. He used his ability to go back in time. I don’t know what happened to him following that, but I was left alone. I’d spoken to you briefly a couple of times, I didn’t know you from your compatriots, really. But your company was missed when my internet gave out.

“After that I drank some more. I tore my land to pieces and gave up on my quests. I’d learnt some things about the game- about the Noble Circle, and about their imminent destruction. They were all I had and I found solace in their companionship. They didn’t try to keep their danger hidden from me, and it was to give me purpose. I knew they were being destroyed by a Demon. He was coming for them one by one, and then He would come for us. In retrospect, everything I’ve learnt was there on LOLAR, but the ruins made it so cryptic it was hard to ascertain a meaning.” A sob racked her body, and she held onto the tub’s edge, hiding her face. She stayed that way a moment, then wiped her eyes and continued shakily.

“He’s like the frogs are. I don’t know how, and I think He’s done it before, to other things. Creation within creations. But He is Creation, His body. Like the frogs. His body is Paradox Space.” She turned to Kanaya, who flicked the towel from the rail and passed it to her, averting her eyes. “I’m sorry, I went off on a tangent.” She attempted a smile. “I amused myself on LOLAR and then my internet started working again. I spoke to you, and I spoke to Doc Scratch, and he made a lot of sense. So I did what he asked, and I was easily led. I fell right into his trap and I killed your Empress and then I was His. I became the Handmaid, inheriting the title.”

She stood on the stone floor, her hair dripping onto her shoulders. Kanaya looked at her and saw their downfall and she also saw her Rose. She pulled her into an embrace, picking her up easily and carrying her to her bedroom. She laid her down on Rose’s bed and picked her a violet dress now too small and girlish for Rose, passing it to her with soft underwear and knitted socks. She set about finding a brush for her hair and a hairband to match. The Handmaid leant across her to find a bullet of lipstick, applying it neatly in a bow. Her clothes were cushy enough to be nightwear, and the Handmaid looked exhausted. The Handmaid could not sleep. Kanaya sat her at the dressing table and combed her unkempt bob. Tangles had formed, and the ends were frayed and split. Kanaya found a pair of scissors in the drawer, placed a towel around her shoulders, and did what she could to make her seem neater.

It was there, looking in the mirror of the vanity table, that Rose found them.

“She’s here.” Kanaya whipped around to face her, who looked on with narrowed eyes. The Handmaid folded her hands in her lap and watched them. Kanaya dropped her scissors, the comb in her hand, and tripped across the room to Rose. The Handmaid brought herself out of the room, watched a scene play out between two animate figures and a cadaverous intruder.

“What’s she doing here?”

“Rose, I promise it is not half as bad as perhaps the situation might lead you to believe as she is in fact very civil and quite like you at her age.”

“Of course she is and don’t you remember just how stupid I was.”

Kanaya’s eyes widened in alarm at the colour which rose swiftly to her cheeks, her own eyes glistening and her fists clenching in Kanaya’s claws.

“It turned out for us all, though.” Kanaya held her hands in her own, her thumbs worrying over blanched palms. “You did nothing wrong.”

“Yes it did turn out quite alright for us but then we all have reason to believe that this is the Alpha timeline and as such of course everything we do will be okay, however she has no such assurance. She;s from another timeline altogether, a doomed timeline, and what happens now if she’s doomed our’s simply by entering it.”

“Please, Rose, you are getting far too ahead of yourself.”

“And not only that but she is quite obviously aligned with Death itself on top of the Noble Gods.”

“You were never this upset when we spoke to her.”

“Because I thought that she would stay put in her timeline. Or die.” Her irises were steely-cold-lavender and unrepenting. “Kanaya, would you leave us a moment.”

Kanaya smoothed her forearm and wiped a tear from Rose’s cheek hoping that the Handmaid wouldn’t see, then left the room fretfully. She hesitated at the door, then she was gone. In her absence the two were quiet for a while. Rose broke the silence first.

“I heard you in the bathroom.”

“That...doesn’t surprise me.”

“There’s more, too.” For appearance’s sake the Handmaid turned in her chair to face Rose.

“I thought as much.” Rose walked to the couch, peering behind it at the mess with a satisfactory nod, then seating herself deep in its pillows. “Would you care to indulge me?”

“My mortality is tied up with his. I know because I’ve tried, many times, to shove off this mortal coil with limited success; it seems my mortal coil is a little more tenacious than might be considered desirable. I think you could maybe see this,” she motioned to her eyes, “in the same way as you could look at your natty pyjamas, or an antithesis of them. I’m an anti-God Tier and so I, too, must die either an heroic or just death. Sui-suicide doesn’t count as either.”

“You’re suggesting that your Lord is a construct of the game, but I would beg to differ.”

“I was only suggesting a model,” The Handmaid snapped at her, sucked at her lips, and continued. “In any case, are you missing a member of your party?”

“Yes. We have Aradia and Sollux in paradox space, John and Jade travelling through another plane of existence,” she said the names sharply, like a pair of knives, and made the Handmaid jolt, “and then we have Gamzee. And WV, though perhaps he would just like some time alone.”

“Tell me about Gamzee.”

“Have you seen him?”

“Just tell me.”

Rose raised an eyebrow dubiously, “He killed a pair of his teammates, desecrated the bodies of others. He was a worshipper at the altar of an ancient cult which revered chaos and seemed determined to bring the session to its knees. It was wise of you to leave it until Kanaya had left, or she’d have taken it upon herself to continue her one-woman troll-hunt for his suffering.”

The thought of the wholesome girl that had bathed the Handmaid not twenty minutes ago made her smile. “Yes, he’s in league with my Lord. They made it their business to manipulate everyone on this meteor, dead and alive, into playing the game out as it did.”

“Eliminating all question of whether fate exists or not in the process.”

“What?”

“It’s a theory which Kanaya and I have been discussing in great detail. One of the greatest themes of the game seems to be the existence of fate, and how it is manifested in the various dimensions of the game. A nice litmus test is where we dream, Kanaya on Prospit and myself on Derse for instance, and how we responded to the game. As Derse dreamers we like to orchestrate our own fates, whereas Prospitians are content to follow the instruction of the clouds- generally speaking, this is. Speaking to you is interesting, you’re so resigned to your fortune and its so alien to me.

“Kanaya did suggest something else, though. That perhaps when we know our lot we only use that as an excuse for it to play out- not that that’s really applicable in this situation- but that we want certain events to play out and that when they do we blame it on Luck.” If she was enthusiastic her face was calm enough not to betray it, though her voice was animated in earent enthusiasm.

“I think you have too much time on your hands.”

“Are you suggesting you wouldn’t do the same in my position?” As she had spoken she had leant forward so that she now sat perched on the edge of the couch.

“Are you suggesting that I’d enjoy it?” The Handmaid smiled, despite herself.

“Are you here because you have a plan?”

“You won’t like it.” Something which, despite herself, the Handmaid revelled in, “But yes, I do.”

“And you’ve exhausted every other option?”

“It wouldn’t be any different had you all reached god tier. He’s everything that exists, ourselves included.”

“But what’s the plan?”

“He’s everything that exists bar the Noble Domain.”

“By which you mean...”

“The Void. The Dreambubbles. He can see you everywhere except when you’re asleep-”

“Or dead. And now we know that death is just another state of being then we needn’t fear it.”

“It might take longer to regroup, but I can move between the Bubbles easily. You could assemble an army of the dead and defeat them.”

“And all it would take is a knife to the back.” Rose rested her chin in her hands pensively, dragging the pad of her thumb across her lip. “Who would do it?”

“I could. Or you. I’d suggest convincing everybody but it would take up time we don’t have.”

“Yes, I doubt Karkat would assent to it. Or Dave. Or Terezi. Oh, God, this idea is fucking lunatic.” Her voice broke too many times to count, and on finishing her sentence she squeezed her eyes shut.

“It’s all we can do.”

“I know that. I just wish we could do something else. We were happy here, all of us. Didn’t you see Kanaya?” Stopping briefly she pushed her fringe from her face. The Handmaid looked away, embarrassed to see her like this. “So how many Noble Ones remain?”

“Barely enough. We need their help to take him on, but we can still do it with those we have left.”

“And we couldn’t wait for John and Jade to arrive? It won’t take long, half a year at the most. They’d be so much help, they’re god tier, too. Jade’s a Witch of Space, she can manipulate her surroundings he surely couldn’t match her for that. There are so many of us we don’t need to die.” Her voice wavered all the more at their names, her molars biting into her cheek with each breath she took.

“No.” The word came out like a flare, and she hoped that it would stop Rose’s hiccoughing. Rather, it caused her to rise from her seat with teeth bared and pull the Handmaid up by her chin, who batted her away. They stood facing each other for an instant, hotly immobile, until Rose pushed the Handmaid aside and pulled the mirror from the wall to crack in shards across their feet. She picked up a shard and held it to held it to the Handmaid’s throat.

Her lip to the shell of the Handmaid’s ear she whispered, voice soft and small: “You cannot have exhausted every other option.” She repeated it in the vain hope that it would illicit some acknowledgement.

When she received no response and blood dripped from her wrist into the saffron jersey of her dress she dropped the glass and pushed her double into the desk by her neck. She grabbed a handful of hair and twisted her over in her arms, seizing a phial of perfume and beat her nose, making a repeated movement of it until the desk dripped and the girl in her arms pushed her away to slump on the floor. All the while she had the words of her beloved on her lips. Rose who stumbled towards her begging her to make it quick for Kanaya, please, “You’re not her Rose, why couldn’t you let it be me.”

“You’re making a scene.” The Handmaid’s words bubbled through the blood of a near-healed wound. On letting her go Rose had backed away, and now ran for the door, shouting for Kanaya to come, to hide, to help her. The Handmaid only decaptchalogued her wands and made her way to the door. The corridor was long and narrow, and she shot Rose through her waist, far too easy a target for it to be honourable. The others would soon drop in similar ways.

The Handmaid left the hall briskly and heard Rose’s sobs diminish behind her. Rose could never have been the one to kill Kanaya because Rose would not have been able to.

***

The Handmaid grit her teeth and went on to complete her task. She watched the wisps of Void before her and imagined them as a shadow of herself, a backwards ghost showing her what she’d done before she did it. The umbra stopped at a door, and waited expectantly for her there. Its fingers already curled around the doorknob, and the Handmaid placed her own atop it. It was cold in her hand, a cold which she forgot as she had forgotten the steps taken to reach the place. She turned the handle, her shroud spilling into the shadowy room where, if she was lucky, she would find the last of them and her mission would be complete.

She did as her shadow wanted, and stepped inside. The darkness shrouded, too, the club which whispered through the dark and hit her squarely in the jaw.

“Now, now, wicked sister. Do not get any fresh ideas with me.”

The club had dislocated her mandible, and sweetly passed across her cheekbone leaving it swollen and violet. For a moment it would do no harm to stay where she lay.

“We are one and the motherfucking same. We are both children of the mirthful Lord, are we not?” He rested his club on her chest, and when she did not answer he punctuated the question with a jab to her sternum. “Do not up and fucking pretend you ain’t got no answer.”

“What are you doing here?” Her voice came out as a wheeze. When she paused midway Gamzee swung his club into her stomach with a smile.

“I was serving the sweetest of Saviors where you were sorely neglecting your duties, hmm?”

“You don’t know the meaning of servitude, you fucking moron.”

“Oh, angel. Cherub, I fucking know the meaning sweeter than you ever did. You only just got the wicked elixir of life on your motherfucking hands, and its been on mine for motherfucking sweeps.”

“The difference, brother, is that I didn’t enjoy it.”

“Your lies smell like miraculous hoofbeastshit. We all know the Lord works in mysterious ways and we all get hooked to the miracle-syrup sooner or later. If you didn’t enjoy it that’d be the biggest mystery of all. And besides, sister, what bitching difference does it make?”

“I came here to help win the game.”

“But you ain’t come here to kill me, sister. I’m up to my tits in this bitch-blessed plan and you’re making me sad just to see that you ain’t.”

“Then you know you can’t kill me.”

“That’s the last thing I motherfucking want. Not cool, you get me?”

He leant easily on his bat, watching her with an eyebrow raised. She rolled onto her front and pushed herself onto all fours. She took deep breaths until she could stand. The swelling had resided, only the most minute stab of tenderness when she touched it. She almost equipped herself with her wands, but then they were gone from her palms and in Gamzee’s before she had even noticed him move.

“You have your own abilities?”

“The Lord’s got his favourites but he makes each and every one of us a miracle in our own fucking way, see? We’re each as wicked as the next.”

“You think I’m his favourite?”

“Oh, child, you do not motherfucking know. You know he’s got his freak on for your maidenly noise. He’s got his sick freak on for all the little girls such as your sweet self.”

“I’ll be sure to tell Him that it is an honour.”

“You tell him, too, sister, that Cal’s got his ninja on and he’s itching to up and move himself back to the fucking homehub, and so’s his most devoted descendent.” He had moved closer to her without her noticing, and held her wands out to her, her departure imminent.

“Have you any more messages or am I free to leave?”

“And you tell him,” he continued, as though she had said nothing, “that he needn’t worry about his baby girl because she has found herself unawares in the most sacred Shangri-La of deepest chucklevoodoos.” 

“I’m sure he already knows.”

“And you answer me one question, too.”

“One question is all you’ll get, wicked brother.”

“Now how the fuck did you think you were saving any age-old game by getting your kill on?”

“The dreambubbles give them a place to all be in one place, to formulate a plan-”

“The dreambubbles get the suckers all in one fucking place for our own One and Blessed to slay them into oblivion with his mighty Honk. That’s all, angel. I’ve been mirthfully enlightened from the very fucking first and we were always doomed as all sin. The puppet of yours has been in cahoots with me since before you were hatched. We got this universe up our shared sleeve, got your clown-boy’s future planned out way back when and we only watched as you all crumbled to the ground. Our Unnamed Saviour is the universe, He is all that is and all that ever was and all that will cease to be.”

 

***

The Handmaid ran no longer. Nauseous, she returned to the mansion. She had her plan. It wouldn’t be enough, never enough, but it would be something. A small compensation. Her shadows appeared in her room, a small corner, and she appeared soon after. Green for life, green for decay; green for hunters and green for lust. Green was her home now. She threw herself onto the bed in celebration. She could not sleep, sleep was for the living. Sleep was something she missed. She was so, so tired. To have a dreambubble of her own would be a blessing, a true one. To dream would be heavenly, to invade the memories of her double. To dream of sinking into lurid sopor with a girl the colour of the sky before a storm, where she would sleep naked in her arms and Rose would place a kiss on her horn. Or she might dream of being read to, her head in Kanaya’s lap, her glow soft and kind and forgiving. She might dream of the two of them eating ice cream in alien flavours, she might dream of her telling Kanaya about her mother. She might dream of telling Kanaya how sorry she was for never listening. She might listen to Kanaya talk sweetly of another, previously loved, whose blood soaked the rock of the meteor. She might dream of a game where they had won. She might dream of many things. But she would not dream; when she died she would slip into oblivion, just as she should have done when Dave had left her. 

She lay back, the mattress wasted on her. She sank deeply into its centre, the pillows filled with eiderdown. She closed her eyes to no avail, and saw herself from above. Against the livid green she looked sickly, her eyes flashing so fast she couldn’t keep up. The room felt inhabited, but sheddable. She brought a hand to her waist and unbuttoned the dress which Kanaya had gifted her. Each unfastening revealed more flesh, pink where the dress had been stained from purple to yellow, and maroon, and green, teal, red. Rainbow blood to match her eyes.

Her skin was a kindness, a refuge from obscenity. It was silk under her fingers. To concentrate on the sensation long enough was almost to become blind. She shrugged off her blouse and dropped it to the floor. As her hand reached over the bed she saw blood under her nails, in the wrinkles of her knuckles, as many-coloured as her eyes. She thought to wash them, but there was nothing to wash them with. She concentrated on the sensation and pretended she was blind.

Her skin was smooth as the sheets that held her. She was not sticky with blood, but dry and clean and guilty. She could easily have been the Rose with a hole through her middle, deep red soaking the bed clothes; that Rose could easily have been laying there obediently, leaving the green unmarked. How funny that she should have been who she was. How many other Roses wondered Paradox Space. 

Belatedly, thinking over what Gamzee had said, she cringed at the thought: Scratch knew what she would do. Indeed, he had known since the moment that he first made contact what she would do. He had seen the blood on her hands from the moment she had awoken on an opal-veined beach, opening her hubtop expecting to find herself four months in the past.

She lay there and focussed on her skin beneath her fingers, and did not notice when Cal appeared at the end of her bed, or, indeed, when he left. She did not notice the shadows in her room nor did she notice Scratch enter the room. It was only when he touched her shoulder, leaning across the mattress, that she fell through the mattress into the waiting arms of the Noble Circle.

“I killed them.”

They did not respond. The only ones left grappled for the Handmaid between them, a paltry circle of a dozen.

“Tell me it’s not possible. Tell me I’ve fucked up. If you tell me I’ll be able to change it. I’ll fix it, I swear.” She roared and scratched her cheeks. She dragged her nails through the flesh and felt it grow back in her wake. “Tell me how to kill him.”

“gnaiih n'gha zhro” 

She stopped her nails and smoothed the wounds.

“Why should that work?” She was given no answer. “Please promise then that you will come. He left you here, I think, for a reason. Just enough of you.”

***

The Handmaid stood on the moon of her one-time co-players. It glowed luminescent, a moon beneath her feet and the Green Sun illuminating her, an aureole of light. Twelve stars above her head, and four on her heart. The pink moon beneath her bare feet. She did not wear the clothes which Kanaya had given her, nor did she wear those that Scratch had. The Green Sun clothed her. All that was missing was the Dragon. 

She wore it like a robe, her master’s inescapable colours, a uniform and an ownership. He was coming, and the Horrorterrors beside her, waiting twice as large as the sun, disturbed their appendages in agitation. The Handmaid took a breath, unnecessary and refined, and held it. She counted to ten, she counted to three billion, she did not suffocate. 

There were no dreambubbles to pass through, no hum of the vacuum of space filled with pockets of memory. These had been destroyed by the blare of noise so low as to rip through psychic frequencies and render their souls extirpated, and along with them memories of doomed timelines. Their lives before, on Alternia, in rooms like she had had, with a guardian just as she had had, and with lives filled with interests and friends and anticipation for the game. With lives before with memories of her aged thirteen - O woe-ridden child, she thought dryly, innocent of treachery!- whose room smelt like slept-in beds and whose clothes littered the floor covered in cat hair, whose humoured her fantasies of grievance and who she played in turn.

She heard the words of Scratch, of what the Handmaid had heard on her own attempted escape. There would be no more running. She had turned her back on this for as long as she could, and she ran no longer. She had waited as long as she could and it had been for very little. If she had been human still her heart would be beating with the force of a hammer to her sternum, her eyes would be shut tight in nervous preparation. She stood there still and unmovable as the Void which became her. Lord English did not suddenly appear, nor did he arrive. He was, as Doc Scratch had warned her, already there.

He opened his mouth, long tusks glinting in the light green and gold, and the Haindmaid expected His Honk to pull at the fibres of reality around her. She heard him speak, instead, with the same polyphonic din which she had heard in herself. He said two words: “Clever girl.” and she smiled.

Then she shot a beam of majykk through his chest, his approach rattling the stony floor. A cylinder of his chest disintegrated and red blood cascaded down his chest.

The Handmaid doubled over in shock, to find her own chest punctured and dripping. Her chest did not heal, and neither did His. One of the Few wrapped an arm around his neck, and another pushed a limb into His mouth. He thrashed in their grasp, pulling at them with elephantine claws. He ripped them apart and black, inky fluid dripped from their wounds. The Haindmaid took no chances, having seen them pulled apart by his Noise. She hesitated only a moment. Then she leapt onto his back, small and soft. Gamzee watched, as destruction fell upon creation, as the prophecies were fulfilled one by one. He watched from the sideline, holding his puppet, and he laughed.

She plunged her hand into his socket and pulled out a billiard ball, her own eye dropping to the floor. She bit her tongue and pulled out another, hearing it drop to the ground. She wretched at the viscous humours running down her cheeks and took up her wands. She trusted and trusted that, as she fell to the ground, the Horrorterrors were tearing him limb from limb, as he had torn them. She trusted in their Vengeance. She trusted that she and they were the same. She was not disappointed. 

It was not his hands tearing her thighs from their sockets. The Noble Ones, as she had hoped, thanked her in destruction. Together they formed a writhing mess of dismemberment and triumph. Each had, in their way, achieved their ends. None but Gamzee appreciated this, their happy endings. The fabric of Paradox Space was warped with each blow to the Demon, and with each blow to the Demon came the death of an Old One, and the fury of the Handmaid. 

She entrusted her wands to a final duty and fired Void through his skull. Void took each of them, one by one, as it had taken her. She had been dead from the first. And with that, Rose’s remains rolled off the mound of green-red muscle, unrecognisable and smiling. 

Behind her eyelids she saw the clouds of Skaia, and Jade entered the game.

**Author's Note:**

> A really big thanks to my betas, Zoë, whose eye for detail has never gone amiss, and Jas, for serial hand-holding and egging on. Further chapters to come!


End file.
